Strong turnout and ID confusion in Pa. election

FILE - This Oct. 29, 2012 file photo shows a Vote Early sign as former President Bill Clinton spoke at a President Barack Obama campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio. Stock up on munchies and make sure the batteries in your TV remote are fresh. With this year’s presidential election razor-close to the finish, Tuesday could be a long night. Even if the presidency isn’t decided until after midnight EST, there will be plenty of clues early in the evening on how things are going for President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. Obama has more options for piecing the 270 electoral votes needed for victory, so any early setbacks for Romney could be important portents of how the night will end. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

HARRISBURG — Voter turnout was strong on Tuesday amid confusion at polling places over voter identification rules in Pennsylvania, which plays a key role in determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the White House and the U.S. Senate.

Democrats had won the past five presidential elections in the state, including President Barack Obama’s win four years ago, but a strong, late push by Republicans raised the level of drama. Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, the fifth-most of any state.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney staged an aggressive, last-ditch effort to erode Obama’s support. Romney capped that 11th-hour sprint with an Election Day visit to Pittsburgh, his second visit in three days to Pennsylvania in what the Obama campaign calls a desperation move as Romney struggles in another key battleground state, Ohio.

Pennsylvania figures to be closely watched nationally: It is a key stepping stone to the presidency for Democrats, since no Democrat has won the White House without Pennsylvania in 64 years.

Advertisement

Polls close at 8 p.m. County election officials around the state expected turnout to be around 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s nearly 8.5 million voters, and lines were long.

In the old steel town of Braddock about 10 miles east of Pittsburgh, Mayor John Fetterman said residents of the predominantly black community waited in lines “around the block,” easily matching the enthusiasm to vote that he saw in 2008.

Heavily Latino wards in north Philadelphia were seeing unexpectedly high numbers of voters, including first-time voters, said Miguel Concepcion of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights.

“One had 300 by 12 noon,” Concepcion said. “Traditionally, if they see 200, that’s a lot.”

Last month, a state judge blocked a new Republican-sponsored law requiring Pennsylvania voters to show photo ID. As a result of the judge’s ruling, polling place workers must still ask voters for a photo ID, but no one is required to produce one. A state law still requires first-time voters to show ID, but non-photo forms are acceptable, including a bank statement or a utility bill.

But reports were rife of election workers nonetheless demanding photo ID from voters, according to Philadelphia-based election watchdog the Committee of Seventy.

Outside one polling place in the Pittsburgh suburb of Rochester, an election worker shouted to a line of voters to “have your ID ready,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Poll watchers reported other problems around the state in the first few hours of voting, including Republican inspectors being denied access to polling places in Philadelphia.

Pennsylvanians will also decide contests for U.S. Senate, 18 congressional seats, state attorney general, state treasurer, state auditor general and most state legislative seats.

In 2008, nearly 68 percent of more than 8.7 million registered voters, or 6 million people, cast a ballot. The odds favor Democrats in statewide races: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a margin of four-to-three.

Early voters at one polling place in strongly Democratic Philadelphia favored Obama.

Franco Montalto, a registered independent, said he voted for Obama again, citing his “sober, balanced approach to making decisions.”

Montalto, 39, an environmental engineer, said he had felt frustration over the last four years — he said Obama could have pushed for a more generous stimulus package to aid the economic recovery, for example — but considers Republicans “dangerous.”

Outside a volunteer a volunteer fire station in rural Lamar in Clinton County, auto parts store employee Frank Fredrick said he didn’t like where the country was headed under Obama and gave Romney his vote.

“He’s a take-charge guy. He impresses me because he can fix things,” Fredrick, 66, said.

At a polling place in the East Shore Baptist Church in suburban Harrisburg, retired police officer Bill Demmy, 50, said he voted for Romney. A registered Republican, Demmy said Romney can do a better job of asserting the United States around the world and of improving the economy, Demmy said.

“Just all around, we’re in bad shape,” Demmy said.

School teacher Pamela McCann, a Democrat, voted for Obama, like she did in 2008. A key issue for McCann, 46, is the president’s signature health care law, and she said Obama deserves another term because four years wasn’t enough to address the economy in the way he had hoped.

“I voted for Obama because I think he hasn’t gotten the time to change the U.S. in the way he wanted to,” McCann said.